Sketch Up Trees

[rjcrowther]

Hi All,
Once upon a time one could import sketch up tees into Revit.

I noted with 2009 (I think?), sketchup 6 was only supported.

I gave 2010 a wide berth and now have updated to 2011 and note that not one of my trees imports. It was a lovely collection too – all 65 of them.

I have tried a new tree which is sketch up version 7 and it is no good as well. So that is sketch up version 5, 6 and 7 emphatically being obstinate.

The user manual states to put the tree into a family first (we have a political party in Australia called family first and some would say they are as useful as...never mind, that is a going to moderated).

I have tried the family first method (Revit not politics) without success.
Then tried in place families and lastly importing directly into the project.

All in all, very little is going right for me.

For anyone wanting to have a go at this, I am not using photo realistic rendering, just shaded with edges and shadows on. It used to work a treat, put a big tree out of view behind the camera and have its leaves cast upon the wall and foreground.

Thanks,
Rob

[patricks]

I would give 'er a go... if I had some SU trees. :)

[muttlieb]

It's not clear to me from your post why your having trouble, but it works for me with SU Pro 6 & Revit 2011. Inserted .skp with tree into family, then loaded family into project. Also works to import .skp directly into project.

[rjcrowther]

Thanks for the reply.

Its not clear to me why I am having trouble either.

I have opened your example nicely.

I am not sure on the sketch up description as I am taking these things from the google warehouse but the trees I am using are 3D and not flat.

I would like to attach a tree that doesnt work but I notice the file extsion is not supported.

[muttlieb]

Here is a 3D tree randomly taken from 3D warehouse imported into family and then project. Used SU 7 this time. When you say "it doesn't work", can you be more descriptive? Do you get some kind of error message?

[muttlieb]

I would like to attach a tree that doesnt work but I notice the file extsion is not supported.

You could provide a link to a Google Warehouse tree that doesn't work, or rename the file extension to an accepted format for upload.

[rjcrowther]

Yes, very obvious at my end but only because I can see whats going on.
Sometimes I worry myself.

Doesn’t work means as follows.

Get a fresh new family template to work with – planting template to be specific.
Go to the import CAD icon and select. Wade through the folder structure to arrive at the relevant skp file, select it , hit the open button and I get the following message

Cannot open ”C:\....\.....\....\BROADLEAF_TREE_4.skp”
where \....\...\ is the folder structure which should not make a difference.

That is the end of it there. Its an import problem.

Oh, before importing I have selected the import options as per page 59 of the user manual.

This message (and it is not just confined to broadleaf tree number 4) also appears if I drag and drop into a family, drag and drop into the family you attached, drag and drop into a project and use the import CAD icon on the insert tab for all of the above attempts as well.

Now to be really annoying, your last tree works in my project.
I cannot get any of my trees into the family you sent so that rules out family template issues.

[rjcrowther]

OK, Solved it I think.

I have memory problems or something similar.

With only Revit running I can import trees into planting families.
As soon as I have something else running at the same time it gives up the ghost.

Have thrown some rep your way.

Thanks for your help.

[rjcrowther]

Yep, definitely memory related.

I just killed Archvision which I never use.

I have reclaimed a swathe of memory and reduced those underlying processes that show in the Task Manager by a couple.

I can now import sketch trees.

[muttlieb]

Glad to hear you got it figured out.

[patricks]

What are your system specs? 32-bit OS and under 4 GB RAM I'm guessing?

[cliff collins]

Has anyone populated a large model with hundreds of the SU 3D trees contained in
planting families, and then rendered?

Wondering how performance is compared to RPCs.

Are the SU 3D trees "hi-poly" like the old Accurender ones?

Just curious.

cheers

[muttlieb]

Has anyone populated a large model with hundreds of the SU 3D trees contained in
planting families, and then rendered?

Wondering how performance is compared to RPCs.

Are the SU 3D trees "hi-poly" like the old Accurender ones?

Just curious.

cheers

I wouldn't recommended it. They are very 'high poly' (at least the one I uploaded here as a test was). Just placing a few in an empty project starts to bog things down, and I have pretty good hardware specs.

[cliff collins]

As I suspected........

thanks

[kreed]

Has anyone populated a large model with hundreds of the SU 3D trees contained in
planting families, and then rendered?

Wondering how performance is compared to RPCs.

Are the SU 3D trees "hi-poly" like the old Accurender ones?

Just curious.

cheers

Yeah, we tried it. Not a lot of fun... bogged everything down. We've been fighting the damn Revit trees for 3 years and still haven't found a way to make them acceptable to the powers that be. Even tried making custom families that had generic shapes for shaded views and RPC render appearances for rendered views. Still all they want is SU trees in Revit. It works if you only need 10-12 but try 300+ and it gets ridiculously slow.

[cliff collins]

We were able to assign a material/color to the "blob" shape of the RPC plants
so they showed up colored in Shaded Views.

They still are not as "pretty" as the SU trees in shaded / shadow views, but they
work for schematic design purposes.

We sometimes go ahead and use "realistic view" in 2011 or render w/ MR
and then apply some filters in PS to soften the images if photorealistic is too
crisp or not appropriate too early in the process.

cheers

[rjcrowther]

What are your system specs? 32-bit OS and under 4 GB RAM I'm guessing?

32 bit and 4GB.

It was not a bad unit a few years ago but it seems to be pretty much below par now.